Cute as a Button

Even though this is a recorded podcast, you can always call us anytime.

The number is 877-929-9673.

Leave your questions and stories about language, and you might just end up discussing them on the air with us.

Thanks for listening.

You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it.

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

I thought I knew a lot of words, but I’ve been learning so many from our listeners lately.

We asked you to write a favorite word in big letters on a piece of paper and send us a snapshot of yourself holding it up.

And we’re posting those on our word wall at waywordradio.org.

And Grant, the fun part is once I start researching those words, I find so much great stuff.

There was tons of stuff in there I didn’t know.

For example, one guy on our word wall was holding up a sign that said, Epalpabrit.

Epalpabrit. I had to look that up.

I did too. As in the Mona Lisa is Epalpabrit.

Right. No eyebrows.

Yeah.

There’s a word for that.

And how about Menahune?

I learned that from another fellow holding up a sign that said, Menahune in Hawaii.

Those are little forest dwellers who come out at night and play tricks on people.

Oh, part of the Hawaiian culture.

Yes.

Very good.

Yes.

For me, the other fun thing about the word wall at waywordradio.org is the fact that you start looking at these folks and you just wonder the stories behind them.

Why does this particular person choose that particular word?

Why does that mean something to them?

So a story about a person choosing a word that itself has a story.

And that in a nutshell is what we do here, right?

It totally is. And we’d love to talk with you about language, 877-929-9673.

Or you can send your questions and email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, my name’s Allie, and I’m calling from Mankato, Minnesota.

Hi, Allie. Welcome to the show.

Hi, Allie.

What’s up?

Thank you. Well, I just had a question.

I have been saying to some of my coworkers at work when they ask me a question to say that I don’t care.

They’ll say, it’s no skin off my nose.

And I have no idea where I picked it up.

I know that I’ve known about this phrase since I was really young.

So it could have been from a cartoon or whatever, but I have no idea where it came from.

And I just started getting so curious about it.

You say, it’s no skin off my nose to mean I don’t care.

Yeah, right.

Okay.

Yeah, what are they asking you?

Well, I manage, like, cashiers at a grocery store.

So they’ll say, hey, do you care if I get a drink?

And I say, well, it’s no skin off my nose.

Like, I don’t care.

We’re not busy, you know.

But then I was like, I don’t know what that really means, so maybe I should stop saying it.

No, you’re good.

Are you a boxer, Allie?

You know, in a ring with gloves and KOs and one, two, three.

No.

I don’t.

There’s a hint in one of the books, American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms.

Is that what it’s called, Martha?

Yeah, I think.

The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms, or some title like that.

I should have written it down.

But they have an entry there on no skin off one’s nose, and they suggest that it comes from boxing, although they have the curious note that says there’s no evidence to prove it.

But I’m imagining the idea is if you’re talking to someone or you’re boxing with someone and they swing at you and they miss, they don’t even touch the tip of your nose, therefore there’s no skin off your nose, and it doesn’t bother you at all.

So I’m just kind of extending out this tiny little note in this book.

Could be boxing, could be fisticuffs.

Sure, yeah, it could be any kind of like, you know, put them up, come on.

Yeah.

And your coworkers understand what you mean when you say that, right?

They do.

Some of the younger ones give me a weird look because they don’t know exactly what, like, they’ve never heard it.

So I would just, I don’t know.

I thought it would be fun to know.

You sound young to me.

How much younger are they?

Do you have 10-year-olds working for you?

No, but we do have some that are like 16, 17, high school age.

Well, maybe you should go up to them and sort of, you know, shadow box.

Maybe then they’ll get the idea.

Right. That might work.

Well, it is a responsibility of us olds to teach all the youngs.

So go for it.

I’ll do that. I’ll pass along the knowledge.

All right. Take care, Allie. Thanks for calling.

Thank you so much.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

You know, skin off my nose is the earlier version.

And more recently, people have said no skin off my ear, no skin off my back.

But skin off my nose is the one that stuck for some reason.

I could see it coming from either boxing or maybe just fisticuffs, you know?

He swung and missed.

Yeah.

Didn’t even get my nose.

Yeah.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hey, is this Grant?

This is Grant.

Who is this?

This is Mark Young from Ellicott City, Maryland.

Well, it’s great to have you on the show.

What’s on your mind?

Well, this is what happened to me.

I was listening to the end of a football game, and one of the players was being interviewed, and he said that I knew I was going to be thrown out of the game.

So before I was, I wanted to speak my peace.

I said, okay, I kind of understand that.

And then a couple of weeks later, I was at a wedding.

And it was presided by a judge.

And at the end, he said, and I’ve heard this before, speak now or forever hold your peace.

So all of a sudden, it kind of went up.

I thought, it sort of sounds the same, but it has a different meaning or does it have a different meaning?

And then, for some reason, I’ve listened to your podcast.

I thought, what would Martha and Grant say about this?

W-W-M-A-G-S.

In the middle of the wedding, well, at the end.

And to me, with the wedding, it’s hold your peace.

I thought it would be like, you know, stay quiet.

Don’t disrupt anything.

But it’s also hold your peace.

Is it like, is it also saying don’t say anything?

Is it your piece of information, which is P-I-E-C-E?

You know, it’s kind of like blending together, but I wanted to know what you thought about that.

Mark, I’m so glad you asked about this because I confuse these for forever.

I always thought that forever hold your peace was, you know, hold the piece of information that you’re not going to give at the wedding that spoils everything.

But it’s not.

No, it’s not.

No, the forever hold your peace at the wedding where you’re not supposed to say anything is P-E-A-C-E.

So hold on to your silence.

Yeah, hold your tongue, in other words.

Keep the peace.

Yeah, keep the peace, you know, within yourself.

And to speak your piece is something completely different.

And this is where I really got confused.

P-I-E-C-E, speak your piece, is like the piece of information that you have.

Oh, right.

Or the piece of, you know, the piece that you’re going to say, like writing a piece.

Right.

So, yeah, you write a piece.

A journalist has a piece in the newspaper, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

So they’re two different pieces.

And it’s just a coincidence that they both have to do with talking.

Yeah.

It’s a collision of idioms.

Yes.

Oh.

When idioms collide.

So it’s a homophonic confusion.

Two different words that sound like peace but mean different things in two situations that are very similar.

English.

English and done me wrong.

Well, thank you very much for your time.

I appreciate having a conversation with you guys.

Sure.

Thank you, Mark.

Great to talk with you, Mark.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

There’s a proverb in Yoruba that this reminds me of.

Do you want to hear this?

This is a translation.

I can’t speak to you.

Oh, I was going to say.

But the translation is, it is abstention from speaking that makes the mouth smell.

In other words, that one should always say one’s piece in a discussion.

Don’t hold back.

Oh, wow.

Wow.

So holding back makes your mouth smell.

I guess that’s true.

That would explain morning breath, right?

Right.

But, okay, so that piece in that case is P-I.

That’s right.

Yeah.

P-I-E-C-E.

Yeah.

We’d love to hear from you.

Call us 877-929-9673 or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Remember we were talking about the word ain’t and how we don’t see ain’t that much and maybe teachers were, you know.

Maybe it works.

Maybe all the injunctions against ain’t had an effect.

Well, I have another great injunction against ain’t.

This was sent to us by Emily K. Hummel, who grew up in the Boston area.

She said she remembers a poem from her childhood that goes,

Don’t say ain’t. Your mother will faint. Your father will fall in a bucket of paint.

Your sister will cry. Your brother will sigh. The cat and dog will say goodbye.

I mean, how tragic.

It sounds like Shel Silverstein a lot, doesn’t it?

Do you think that’s what it is?

It could be. We’ll have to dig that out.

Well, Karen Irwin on our Facebook page mentioned another version that ends with,

Not the cat and the dog will say goodbye, but or your dog will call the FBI.

I think that would be pretty cool, you know, if you could teach your dog to talk on the phone.

Anyway, good reasons not to say ain’t.

And we’d love to hear from you, 877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Amanda from La Mesa, California.

Hi, Amanda. How are you doing?

I’m doing well.

What can we help you with?

Well, I had a question about a word that I’ve used a bunch, and it’s scuttlebutt.

Scuttlebutt.

Scuttlebutt.

Scuttlebutt.

And how do you use it?

Well, I use it as kind of a synonym for gossip.

Mm—

And I feel like it’s a word I’ve kind of always known.

I don’t really remember learning it.

But when I used it recently, my roommate just kind of gave me a look

And didn’t have a clue what I was talking about.

Really?

So I was kind of wondering where it came from and how common it is.

And so you’re understanding that scuttlebutt means gossip?

Yes.

Yeah, yeah.

So you ask somebody for the latest scuttlebutt on this or that.

Yeah.

It’s kind of interesting.

You’re not in the military, perhaps, are you?

Navy or Air Force or anything like that?

I’m not, but I live right by San Diego.

It’s kind of a military town.

Yeah, okay.

Yeah, there’s that.

Yeah, and Grant’s right.

It does have a very clear and very picturesque etymology

Because on a ship back in the old days, a scuttlebutt was the place that you went to get water, get something to drink.

And a scuttlebutt was a kind of cask that had a hole cut in it.

And you would dip your spoon or your ladle in that.

And it would be like a drinking fountain or the water cooler or maybe the coffee pot in an office today.

Exactly. So scuttlebutt is a literal synonym for water cooler talk.

That’s what we would say in American office environments today, right?

Yeah, that’s funny.

Because just any place where people gather to drink, they talk.

Yeah.

And it’s an interesting origin because the word butt, B-U-T-T, also meant cask, like a container for water.

And scuttle, if you scuttle something, like you scuttle a ship, you cut a hole in it so that it’ll sink and you’ll get rid of it.

So a scuttled butt, later scuttlebutt, was a kind of cask that had a hole cut out of it so that you could reach in and get the water out.

Okay.

So there you go.

There you go.

And I asked about the military connection because just because that vague idea of anybody who might be at sea might be more likely to know the term.

Yeah.

Okay.

Cool.

Interesting.

Thanks.

So you can pass this along to your roomie now.

Yeah, and stop gossiping about people.

I got some good stuff on Grant.

Oh, hello.

Call me later, okay?

I want to know.

What is it?

My life’s boring.

Thanks for calling, Amanda.

Much appreciated.

All right, thanks.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

What do you know?

What do you say?

What confused you?

Or what confused somebody else?

877-929-9673 or words@waywordradio.org.

Here’s another word from our word wall, gentle.

G-I-N-N-E-L.

General.

I had to look that one up.

I had no idea.

I did, too.

It’s a long, narrow passage between houses, either roofed or unroofed.

You see that in Manchester Leeds and other parts of Yorkshire.

Sounds kind of like a breezeway.

Yeah, sort of.

A little bit.

But a general.

Good.

I have no idea about the etymology.

Well, there’s tons more room on the word wall.

Send us yours.

words@waywordradio.org.

More of the joy of Lex as A Way with Words continues.

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You’re listening to A Way with Words.

I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett.

And we’re joined once again by that master of the quiz world, John Chaneski.

Hello, John.

Hi, Grant.

Hi, Martha.

Hello, John.

Hi.

I’m back.

Ready to master your quizzes for you.

What’s magical?

What do you got for us?

Well, I’m trying to sort of invent a new form of wordplay.

Now, you guys know Tom Swifties, right?

Yeah, sure.

Easily hand me that keystone, Tom said archly.

Yes.

I dress on the left, Tom said fittingly.

I’m going to give you something similar.

I’m going to give you a little question about a situation, and the adjective is the answer we’re going for, okay?

Okay.

And if I have to, I’ll give you an anagram of the answer, and we’ll see who gets it first.

Here we go.

Okay.

Did you hear about the contest winner who won a knighthood?

He was what?

The anagram is rid purses.

Rid purses.

Rid purses.

He was surprised.

Surprised.

He was surprised.

Aha.

Okay, I get it.

Did you hear about the small country where the dictator closed down all the newspapers?

The people there are what?

Depressed.

They’re depressed.

Oh, good, Grant.

Well, they would be.

Good.

No anagram needed.

Did you hear about the boy who was trying to get to sleep?

When his mom blew out the candle, he was…

Delighted.

He was delighted, yes.

Grant, these are puns, and you’re getting them.

What’s going on?

Yeah, right?

You must know thy enemy.

Oh, boy, he’s coming over the dark side now.

Did you hear about the couple who called off their wedding?

They ended up feeling very…

What?

I don’t know, but they disavowed each other.

That’s not bad.

Not bad.

I have an anagram is design aged.

Design aged.

Disengaged.

Very good.

Disengaged is right.

Perfect.

Yes.

Nice.

Did you hear about the captain of the sailing ship?

When the wind died down, he was what?

Deflated.

That’s not bad.

But for an anagram, I have dead guests.

Disgusted.

He was disgusted.

Disgusted.

Very nice.

Very good.

Yeah.

Hey, did you hear about the really smart kids on Christmas morning?

They were what?

This one has a single word anagram.

It’s fidget.

Gifted?

Gifted.

Very good.

Very good.

Did you hear about the greedy merchant down at the seaport?

He’s quite what?

For an anagram I have, is flesh.

Is flesh.

Selfish.

Selfish.

Oh, because he sells fish.

Selfish.

Oh, I get it.

You probably sell shellfish, I guess.

By the seashore.

Did you hear about the guy whose dog ran away?

On the plus side, his home is…

For an anagram, I have set slops.

Spotless.

Yes.

His dog ran away and I was almost spotless.

Oh, no.

Oh, no.

That was really bad.

She kind of works out, I guess.

I think that left a mark.

Did you hear about the guy who sells white walls all day long?

He’s pretty…

Tired.

Yeah, that guy.

Did you hear about the happy masochist?

He’s really what?

The anagram is, eat pub.

Upbeat.

Upbeat, yes.

Very good.

This is the last one.

Here you go.

Did you hear about the two spies who worked very well together?

They were quite…

The anagram is overcoat pie.

Overcoat pie.

It’s a word for spy?

It’s a word for someone who’s doing something for you.

Maybe I should take this one for myself.

Okay, please do.

The answer is cooperative.

Cooperative.

There you go.

Cooperative.

John, every week you make me feel really slow.

It’s good for my humility.

Oh, no.

You guys are great.

Thanks, buddy.

Really appreciate the quiz this week.

Thanks, guys.

It was a lot of fun.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Call us to talk about language, 877-929-9673.

Send us an email to words@waywordradio.org.

And find us on Facebook and Twitter.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi.

Hi, who’s this?

This is Timna Grettencourt.

I’m calling from the College of Lake County in Graves Lake, Illinois.

Oh, okay.

Is that a community college?

It is a community college.

I teach English composition, the freshman comp class here.

How can we help?

Well, one of my students wrote me an in-class essay recently, and at the end he had this very interesting question.

He said at the end of the essay that so far he learned that research papers are not as bad as he thought they had to be, but it still didn’t mean he liked them, and he was not going to start capitalizing his pronoun I until somebody could explain to him a good reason why he should.

And I’ve shared this question with a lot of other people recently, and I get all kinds of responses from anywhere from kids today, you know, they’re texting, they don’t want to follow any of the rules, down to, well, you know, in typesetting, we use the capital I for this reason and that reason.

So I just wanted to get it from, you know, the horse’s mouth, so to say.

That would be us.

Yeah, so his question is, of course, why do we capitalize the pronoun I?

We don’t capitalize any of the other pronouns.

And he says it feels like he’s a grand-eye-ing himself when, if he puts it, he’s a college student, and what the hell does he know?

Were there more than that?

Yes.

My question is, when did we start capitalizing the I?

Because if I look back at illuminated manuscripts, you have the great big illuminated letter, and then the rest of it would be in, say, lowercase.

And if you go back farther than that, as far as I can tell, it’s all capital.

So could you explain that, please?

Wow, this is a big topic.

There’s a couple things to address here.

But just in case we run out of time, I kind of want to get at his point that he feels like he’s aggrandizing himself.

Yeah, that’s really interesting.

This is what’s interesting to me.

We don’t capitalize I in English because the speaker, the one using I, is important.

We don’t.

It’s not about recognizing some kind of special status of the first person pronoun.

It’s not.

And I know people think that it is.

It is a convention of written English that we use that capital I.

Otherwise, you might have a case where you, Y-O-U, would be capitalized, or we, W-E, would be capitalized, but, you know, any other pronoun.

But it’s strictly a convention.

Now, why it’s a convention is a complicated story without a certain answer.

Some people believe that we capitalize the I because in early manuscripts, before typesetting, it was easier to differentiate that pronoun from other letters.

I mean, you’ve got this letter I kind of hanging out there on the page by itself.

And it’s one of those things, Martha, right?

If you look at the letter I in a sentence for too long, you’re like, why is this here?

Why is this on its own?

Where are its friends?

It needs companions, right?

Right.

Because it belongs to one of the other words on either side.

Yeah, yeah.

So it’s just a visual thing.

So some people who’ve studied this at length, and I know you’ve probably heard some of these opinions, they believe that maybe it was just done in the beginning to differentiate this.

Now, we’ve been capitalizing this for centuries, 13th, 14th century, maybe even further back.

There was a period there when the lowercase i was used.

But it tended to look maybe like versions of the j, when the j became more common and was more commonly written.

So you might capitalize the i just to separate it out.

And it was written like a vertical straight line without any kind of capitals on it and without a dot.

Oh, okay.

So that’s the best theory about why we capitalize the I.

But his larger question about aggrandizing himself.

He’s not.

Don’t you think he’s calling more attention to himself by using lowercase i?

It’s sort of like, hi, E. Cummings and I are, you know, special.

Well, here I think some of the people who are saying, oh, the kids today and the texting, I think they have a point.

And I don’t mean to put down texting.

I think it comes in very handy.

But when you are texting a lot, you don’t capitalize.

And so it wouldn’t make sense for him to come from one convention, you know, texting into the convention of writing for a college paper and say, why?

Why is there this difference here?

It feels strange to me.

But my phone corrects me.

Yeah, mine does too.

If I do a lowercase i.

The thing is, even before texting, this question has come up.

But there’s a question that he asked you that I also want to answer.

Why should he capitalize the letter I in a research paper?

Because that’s the style of that medium.

And if he doesn’t, he deserves marks off.

Seriously, that’s how it’s done.

I mean, you can fight it outside that arena, you know, in office hours or in the student newspaper or over a drink at a restaurant.

But you don’t fight it in the paper.

You just do what’s asked for of you in the paper and fight it somewhere else.

Well, it sounds like you’re doing a great job putting old heads on young shoulders.

There. I think he came in with an old head, but thank you. Thank you, Timna. All right. Thank you.

Thanks a lot. Bye-bye. I like that. 877-929-9673. Email us, words@waywordradio.org, and find us on Facebook.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Kristen Anderson in Apalachicola, Florida.

Hi, Kristen.

Apalachicola.

Yes.

All right. Well, welcome to the show. How can we help today?

Thank you.

Well, when I was a child, my mother taught me this funny little poem, which she said her grandmother had taught her.

And my mom was born in 1916, so her mother’s mother would have been somewhere in the 19th century.

Okay. Do you have the poem memorized?

Yes, I do.

Oh, let’s hear it.

A malice pan saw a bit of lum sitting on a serp cone, chewing rubber rum.

Said the police pan, send me gum.

Tixie on your nintype, said the biddle—

Okay.

What does that mean in English?

Okay, in regular English.

A policeman saw a little bum sitting on a curbstone chewing rubber gum.

Said the policeman, give me some.

Tixie on your tintype, said the little bum.

And so this has passed from mother to daughter for a long time.

Yes, three generations.

Wow, and in what context?

Were you being bounced on her knee?

Well, you know, working around in the kitchen or, you know, just maybe riding in the car.

Okay.

And my mom also told me that Nixie on your tintype was considered to be very sassy and rude in those days.

Yeah, that’s the phrase that jumps out at me, Nixie on your tintype.

Yeah, Nixie comes from the German Nicht, right, for no, or it’s a negative.

And then tintype would be a picture of your face, right?

The old-fashioned kind of photography method, right?

Right.

Yes, exactly.

So I don’t know, what does that mean, spitting on your face?

Or like I put an X across your photograph?

Yeah.

How does that work?

Yeah, something like that, I think.

Was that your sense of it, Kristen?

Oh, yes.

-huh.

So you’re just driving along, jetting down the highway, and just you rip out with this poem just because it occurs to you?

Well, I’m at a stage in my life where I’m trying to remember things, and especially things that my mom taught me, because I don’t have any children, and my niece is now almost 30.

And I just think it’s kind of fun to keep these things going in the family.

Absolutely.

And then I thought, well, why not share it more widely?

Very good.

There it is.

I agree.

You know, I’m digging around, and I see almost a word-for-word example of this.

Really?

Published in a book published in 1914 and it’s called Bambi has nothing to do with the little cute deer though it’s about a young woman and her entering into society and that sort of thing but it’s almost exactly word for word the same one so this kind of confirms that at the very least it.

Wasn’t just the family rhyme. Other people knew this rhyme, and maybe there was a period in America where people, this was one of the things that you memorized for school work. Who knows? I it boy, it it just does not come up that often, though.

I could hear it on the playground because Nixie on your tintype sounds like, it’s got the same rhythm as na-na-na-boo-boo.

Yeah.

Nixie on your tintype.

Well, that’s what I wanted to ask you. Is there a melody to this? You read it, but is there sometimes a song to it?

Well, no, I never heard that, but it wouldn’t surprise me, I suppose.

Okay.

Can you give us another reading one more time?

Okay.

Okay.

A molise pan saw a bit of lum sitting on a syrup cone chewing gubber rum. Said the molise pan, see me gum. Tixie on your nintype, said the bit of lum.

Well, we’ll make sure to put that poem in full, both versions, on the website. And I want to thank you so much, Kristen, for calling with that and sharing it, because now you’ve done what you wanted to do. You’ve passed it along. You’ve passed it along.

Thank you.

Take care now.

Okay, bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

That’s great.

Nixie on your tintype.

Nixie on your tintype.

What’s the opposite of that?

Well, you know, I used to work in a post office years and years and years ago, and Nixies were the letters for whom we couldn’t find addressee.

That’s right.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

And our handle on Twitter is WeWord.

In a recent episode, we were talking about flotsam, and somebody referred to it as something you throw off a sinking ship.

Oh.

Yeah, we have a lot of sailors listening, apparently, because we got a lot of email about that. Like this one from Chris Henry, who writes, love the show, but couldn’t allow your definition of flotsam to go unchallenged.

Every sailor knows jetsam is thrown overboard, while flotsam is the result of shipwreck or sinking.

So, yes, we stand corrected thanks to Chris and Travis Parkin in Albuquerque and John in Coppel, Texas, and everyone else who wrote to us to distinguish between flotsam and jetsam.

You can write to us at words@waywordradio.org and find us on Facebook and Twitter.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Well, good afternoon. This is Paula from Palm City, Florida.

Hello, Paula. Welcome.

Hi, Paula. How are you doing?

I’m very well today, and how are you?

Super duper.

What can we do for you?

Well, I’ll tell you, I have a phrase that I was wondering the origin, and it’s called cute as a button.

And I’ll tell you how it comes up in our life.

Okay.

I don’t ever have to fish for compliments from my husband. He’s very good about saying, do you look nice?

Is that something new?

I don’t think I’ve seen that before.

But when I’ve gotten ready to go out someplace and I’m feeling particularly playful, I’ll pop out of the bedroom, bathroom area, strike a pose, and say, gee, don’t I look cute as a button?

Oh, la la.

Which makes us both laugh.

And part of the thing is that I imagine being cute as a button somewhat involves being maybe in your teens or your 20s. So I’d have to be a little more mature button than that.

But it does make us laugh and just wondered what would be the origin of that.

That’s great.

That is really good.

Cute, as in cute and a button, comes from the word acute. And it represents, what is that, a small angle, right?

Yeah, cute is sharp or small.

Sharp or small.

Yeah.

And so by extension, cute came to mean small or dainty. Dainty is probably really the best word for this.

Although today we think of cute as mainly being attractive in kind of a non-beautiful way, if that makes sense.

Yeah, but the button part has to do with being small and tiny.

Right.

Does he ever call you cute as a bug? Or a bug’s ear? Or cute as a bug’s ear?

That’s really tiny.

I’ve heard that phrase. I’ve heard that phrase before.

So in all these cases, we’re talking about something small that’s finely crafted or is very delicate.

Buttons used to be made by hand, by the way.

And even the machine-made buttons are still very simple devices that have little grooves and ridges and sometimes designs and stuff.

But, Paula, you bring up an interesting point.

You think that cute as a button is more applicable if somebody is young.

You know, it strikes me as such, and I was trying to think why I had that impression.

I’ve always thought it was a compliment if someone said you’re cute as a button.

But somehow or other, that doesn’t seem to be a phrase that I would apply to someone who had maybe moved beyond their 20s.

And I don’t know why I have that bias.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, Helen Maron is hot.

She’s not cute as a button.

Well, that’s right, yeah.

Oh, very interesting.

You know, it reminds me, I don’t know who wrote it, but there was a tweet I saw just the other day.

Somebody said, I’m trying to figure out how to put down my female friend.

Shall I call her cute or shall I call her adorable?

And it’s this idea that cute and adorable are somehow less than, I don’t know, beautiful or attractive.

All right.

But it is a compliment.

Yes.

Definitely a compliment.

It sounds like you deserve it.

It sounds like your husband deserves lots of compliments as well.

Well, he really is very good about noticing things like that.

And, of course, he says, having been on your show previously and used a phrase,

He said that I would find it easier to have cute as a button as I see it in a mirror as opposed to seeing it out the window.

So he said I call myself cute as a button.

But, yes, he does deserve credit for being observant and noticing those things.

Oh, that’s great.

That’s great.

Well, we appreciate your calling.

Well, thank you so much, and I hope you have a wonderful day.

Thanks, Paula.

Thanks, Paula.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Thank you.

Bye.

877-929-9673.

Email us words@waywordradio.org.

More of your questions about language?

Stay tuned.

You’re listening to A Way with Words. I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

The weeks on either side of the winter solstice were special in ancient Greek mythology,

And therein Grant lies the story of the origin of a lovely English word.

You’ll tell it.

I will.

You may recall that in Greek myth, Eolus was the god of the winds,

And he had a daughter named Alcyone.

She fell in love with a mortal named Siix,

And they had this incredible, blissfully happy marriage.

But their big mistake was that Siax and Alcyone were so happy that they dared compare their relationship to that of Zeus and Hera, the king and queen of the gods.

And you know, in ancient Greece, you don’t do that, right?

You don’t show hubris like that.

And in telenovelas, which it sounds like you’re describing.

Yeah, sort of the same thing.

This is the ancient version.

So when Siax was traveling on a ship, Zeus, in a fit of rage, sent a storm to wreck it.

And his wife, Alcyone, had this premonition about her husband’s death.

And so she went down to the seashore to look for him.

And sure enough, there the body of her beloved husband washed up on the shore.

And she was so despondent that the gods finally felt sorry for her, as they often do in Greek myths.

So they changed both Alcyone and her husband into kingfishers.

Now, these are birds whose devotion to each other is legendary.

And in honor of Alcyone, the Greeks gave her name to this bird.

And tradition holds that just before and after the winter solstice,

The descendants of this devoted pair of birds charm the seas for just a couple of weeks.

And during that time, the surface of the sea is so calm that they nest on the water and they hatch their eggs.

And this period of calm seas and happiness gave us an English term for a period of happy tranquility.

Those happy days of Alcyone became, in English, halcyon days.

Oh, very good.

Do king fishers actually nest on water?

I think maybe they do.

Really?

Like floating nests?

It’s myth.

I don’t know.

Maybe.

Yeah.

And then they light themselves on fire.

And then they come back as comets.

I love mythology for that.

We read some of that to my son.

It’s always like one more thing.

You think that they’re done, and they’re like, and then he grew antlers.

And now you know the rest of the story about that house.

That’s the rest of the story.

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And we are all over social media.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Rachel.

Hi, Rachel.

Where are you calling from?

I’m calling from Encinitas, California.

All right.

We are glad to have you on the show.

What’s up?

Welcome.

Thank you so much for having me.

Sure thing.

So me and one of my coworkers has gotten a pretty funny argument the other day about the term white on rice.

And she was asking me to do something.

I’m like, oh, yeah, I’m all over it, just like white on rice.

And she’s like, what does that even mean?

I think it’s racist.

And I’m like, it’s not racist at all.

It just means like you’re covering something, just like white covers rice.

And then she’s like, but white doesn’t always cover rice.

It can be multigrain and it can be brown.

Exactly.

And I was like, I think you’re reading too much into it.

I think this just means you’re handling something completely.

So then we started doing some research, and we couldn’t find anything definitive explaining whether or not it’s racist or not.

So we came to you guys for a…

Why would it be racist?

I think her thinking was just that it had white in it.

The terminology white immediately made it racial.

Interesting.

And are both of you from California?

Yes, yes.

I’m originally from Maryland, and she is originally from Ohio, though.

Everyone’s transplants.

Oh, really?

Okay, so you heard white on rice as you were growing up all the time?

All the time, yeah, just like it’s handled, it’s taken care of.

And we actually asked another co-worker here who happens to be married to an Asian man, and she said, no, it’s fine.

We really run it through the office here, so we need help because we don’t want to be saying it if it does actually have some kind of racial connotation in there.

There’s nothing racial whatsoever about white on rice.

Thank you.

But it’s interesting to me that you use it to mean, you say, I’m on it like white on rice, where traditionally you would say something is as close or is stuck to something like white on rice.

Oh, I’ve always used it as I’m all over that like white on rice.

Oh, interesting.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I’m on it.

I’m stuck on it like white on rice.

And over history, it pops up frequently in African-American speech and not white American speech, which is really interesting to me.

Oh, that’s interesting.

I think because of the whole rice thing, too, I think she then thought it had more to do with Asian-Americans and she was like, I think that’s also why she also did that.

No, there’s nothing racial.

It’s just about, traditionally, the rice that we’ve eaten in the United States has been white for a very long time.

And still most people eat white rice.

White rice is very sticky, usually.

And so the sticking to something like white on rice is about that.

Not only the color, but like the quality of rice of being a sticky thing itself.

Yeah, I mean, I can.

Yeah, in these sensitive times, I can see why it would catch her ear.

But it’s fine.

There’s no history of it.

There’s no story of it.

Yeah, and it’s part of a tradition of saying things like, I’m all over that, like green on grass.

Right, right, right.

Wet on a whale.

Yeah, that’s exactly what I said to her.

Then I said something like, it means like, you’re covering something like how germs cover babies.

I gave her that analogy.

I like that.

Yeah, and she’s like, okay, that I understand, but.

I’ve seen like lint on blue surge as well.

Oh, that’s good.

Well, and you know, President George W. Bush used like ugly on ape.

Like ugly on an ape.

Yeah, or Ugly on 8, I think it was.

That’s nice.

Okay.

Well, I’m glad to hear that I’m right and this is not right.

You’re all over it, aren’t you?

I’m all over it.

Thanks for calling.

It’s handled.

Thank you.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

There is a great quote that uses this expression in a book by Geneva Smitherman.

It’s called Talking and Testifying.

So it’s about African-American English.

And she quotes an introduction to a 1969 music album by Frankie Crocker.

I’ve never heard of him.

But the quote is exquisite.

And it goes, closer than whites on rice, closer than colds on ice, closer than the collars on a dog, closer than ham is on a country hog.

I love that.

Oh, my gosh.

So that’s close.

I like cold on ice.

And he’s using it, as you’ll often find, at least in the 60s and 70s, you were talking about personal relationships.

So you might say, instead of saying they’re as thick as thieves, they’re sticking to each other like white on rice.

Yeah.

Of course, you wonder why it’s rice.

Why isn’t it, you know, like red on apple?

Don’t know.

How about orange on orange?

Never mind.

If you got in trouble with a friend for saying something that they didn’t think you should say, let us be the deciders, 877-929-9673, or tell the whole sordid story in an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Jules from Dowsborough, Indiana.

Well, welcome to the show. How can we help you today?

Well, thanks.

I have been wondering about a phrase that I grew up with, which is ate up.

And it’s used in a manner of being consumed by something.

And usually it’s used directed at a person or a situation.

Like for someone that over-decorates for Halloween or Christmas, we would say, well, they’re pretty ate up about decorating for Christmas.

But you pretty much, you leave off any extra.

You just say, they’re ate up.

They’re ate up.

Yes, I know this one.

And you grew up in Indiana?

I did, yeah.

Okay.

And there are probably streets there where people are all ate up with putting all kinds of decorations on the house, right?

Oh, yes.

A lot of people that are ate up.

This is a really interesting slang term.

I love it.

It’s almost dialect, but I think I’m going to leave it in the realm of slang because it changes so much depending who’s saying it.

I grew up knowing this in Missouri, and we usually meant if I said, boy, he was all ate up over the way that house sale went, it meant that he was upset and consumed, as you say, but consumed by the notion that things didn’t go perfectly.

So all of the different ate ups that we have, if we can kind of come up with an umbrella definition, it means obsessed or even overwhelmed by the complexity of something, overcome, or even just tired out by something.

You might see a two-year-old at the end of a long day kind of weaving back and forth about ready to fall asleep in their footsteps.

And you might say, oh, he’s just ate up.

Yeah.

Right?

And it’s time to put him to bed.

Yeah.

So it’s basically consumed.

Yeah.

On all the varieties of meaning of consumed, all the inflections and kind of nuances and connotations of consumed.

Yeah.

But this notion has a long tradition.

I mean, Jane Austen wrote about somebody being ate up with pride.

Exactly.

And Shakespeare talked about having been eaten up with passion in Othello.

And now in the military in the United States, do you know anybody in the military perhaps?

I do.

I have some family members.

Okay.

In the Army and the Navy, I’m sorry, in the Army and the Air Force, they have versions of ate up which don’t quite jive perfectly but still kind of fall under the umbrella term.

As I understand it, in the Army, if you’re AIDUP, it means you’re confused.

You’re just kind of dulled by circumstances.

And in the Air Force, and I know we have a lot of people in the Air Force who listen, it means that you’re dedicated to service, which means you are consumed by the idea of being the best that you can be at your job.

Not to take the Army’s slogan and apply it to the Air Force, but there you go.

And you would just say, so-and-so is AIDUP, Captain so-and-so is AIDUP, or AIDUP with?

Yeah, something like that.

Sometimes it comes with the preposition afterwards, sometimes it doesn’t.

Yeah, the gung-ho guy who’s out there doing his duty and shoes are shined and buttons are polished and yay.

And then he retires and decorates his house with lots of Christmas lights. Ate up with patriotism.

Could it maybe have originated too from being infested by something, like by bugs?

That’s a really good one, yeah. I’ve been ate up by misquiet. When I was talking about it, that’s kind of where we diverted to.

Really?

I love that.

The notion of… That idea of being eaten up by, you know, lice or having a tick. And, you know, when you are experiencing that, that’s all you can think about.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You’re back by it. That’s not bad. That’s not bad.

I don’t know if Jane Austen had mosquitoes on her land, but it could be. It jives perfectly, doesn’t it?

I think so. Yeah.

All right, Jules, thanks for calling.

Okay, thanks a lot. Take care now. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye. Thanks. Bye.

What’s got you ate up about language? 877-929-9673. Email us, words@waywordradio.org. And check out our brand new word wall on the website.

Via the Twitter feed of Maude Newton, here’s a quotation I really like. This is from William John Banville, who writes, John Banville and sometimes as Benjamin Black. He’s an Irish novelist, an adapter of dramas, and a screenwriter. And from his book, The Sea, comes this quotation, The past beats inside me like a second heart.

Oh, that’s great. Good stuff, right? One sentence just knocks you out. The past beats inside me like a second heart.

Yeah, yeah. 877-929-9673 or email us, words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi there. This is Kevin Kusner calling from San Diego.

Hi, Kevin. Welcome.

Hey there. What’s up, buddy?

I was wondering more of a historical reference. In what other instances has a phrase or a word like like crept into the vernacular of just so many people in the country?

I’m not sure if this is from usage in movies or if it’s perhaps people trying to soften the message that they’re talking about. I’ve noticed that people make eye contact a lot more during their conversations. It’s typically when they put like in the middle of it, so they’re trying to seek an immediate feedback.

So this is the like that we use while we’re speaking to suggest that either we’re not confident or sure about what we’re saying, right? It makes us hesitant. It makes sure that the listener knows that we’re approximating our feelings or approximating our report of what happened, right?

Yes, and they also happen to use you know in the same particular instance, probably for the same exact reason.

Right. We have a lot of these different features in English. They’re a type of filler word. I won’t go too much into what they all do, but we do know that the thing about this particular like, and there are a lot of likes in English. There’s not just one. I mean, like has more than one meaning. It has a lot of uses, and it depends on circumstances.

But this particular like, you know, like Martha and I have this radio show, and I’m like, it’s fun to do. And we like, you know, the collars are great. Like, you know, all of that way of talking is a way of making sure that your audience finds you somewhat relatable.

And there’s another component to it, too. When we use these crutches, these verbal crutches, we do it the same way that we catch on to, how shall I put this, jokes or fads or fashion or behaviors or other modes of speech or modes of acting. These words are transmitted around a group or a peer group of people in a way that follows lines of influence.

So if Martha and I are speaking at an event and Martha drops the word, what’s your favorite word, Martha? Mellifluous. Mellifluous. And everyone goes home and they find the word mellifluous popping up in their speech. It’s because the line of influence there is Martha to these listeners who came to hear her speak, right?

And so the like in these groups transmits in the same way through these power grids, literally, from centers. Power grids. I like that. Very much. It’s the relationships, right? If you respect somebody, you pick up their modes of speech.

So like was transmitted in that way. A lot of people like to credit like, and I have to mention this, to the Valley Girls phenomenon of the 1980s. But what’s really interesting about that, the Valley Girls phenomenon, didn’t start it. It simply recognized it and identified what was already happening in some of the speech of some of the California kids, mostly the young women.

Right, so you can’t blame Moon Eunuch.

No, you can’t. They didn’t start it. They may have brought it occasionally to people elsewhere in the country, but really what was happening, it was just identified, recognized, put into a song, showed up in movies, showed up in TV scripts, therefore the rest of the country sees it and there’s some influence that way. That is a part of that power grid. That is a line of influence.

And whether it’s strong or weak depends upon the subject matter and the audience and the influencer. So I know that’s all kind of vague, but what we’re really talking about here is relationships between people. This is how a word like this particular kind of like moves from person A to person B and does it repeatedly so that it becomes a noticeable, recognizable trend.

Does that make sense?

It makes some sense. As someone who’s trained to do public speaking, I find if I put like and you know in the middle of my sentences, it’ll decrease my credibility, which is what you alluded to about the lines of power.

But that’s a different kind of relationship here. The relationship that we’re talking about is between friends and family. And in that case, the modes of speaking are very different than what you would have on stage.

What’s really interesting, too, you say that it will decrease your credibility, but you are going to find a large part of your audience, as long as you don’t overuse them, are going to find that using like and you know makes you relatable.

Yeah, accessible.

Accessible. If the speaker sounds like I do, then I’m going to feel more comfortable, right? So it’s really interesting because the people who are complaining the most about like and you know tend often to have their own little ticks and oddities in their speech that make them relatable and that they’ve adopted because other people respond positively to these little bits of accent or these little bits of notes of hesitance in their language.

It is really about relationships and these things, as long as they’re not overused, and I have to stress that caveat. They do work. They do make you sound a little more approachable.

Well, thank you. You guys gave me a great explanation.

Thank you for calling. Bye-bye. Take care. Bye-bye.

I know this is a messy topic, but let me just summarize.

Okay. You shouldn’t overuse like and you know.

Sure.

Right? But there’s a place for them.

Absolutely. And it’s a valid, real grammatical place for them. And if you do use them in the right way, at the right frequency, they can make you relatable.

Yeah, sometimes I think it’s a matter of rhythm. You know, if I just think about the rhythm of talking to people, like if I say, can I borrow your sweater? There’s something there in the rhythm that feels like the people around me.

I’m going to try to find some of the more approachable academic papers on this subject.

Oh, that’d be great. Because if you can comprehend them, they’re thrilling when you start to realize that the role that like plays is something that we don’t give over to very many other words. It’s kind of found a place for itself.

Thrilling. I love that. We are big nerds, Grant. And there are a lot of big nerds out there we know, so call us 877-929-9673.

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A Way with Words is independently produced and distributed by Wayword, Inc., a nonprofit supported by listeners and organizations who believe in lifelong learning and better human communication.

The show is recorded at Studio West in San Diego, California.

Thanks for listening. I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett. Take care.

Ciao.

You like potato and I like potato.

You like tomato and I like tomato.

Potato, potato, tomato, tomato.

Let’s call the whole thing off.

But oh, if we call the whole thing off.

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